Gwen John

Gwendolen Mary John (1876-1939) was a Welsh artist who worked in France for most of her career. Her paintings, mainly portraits of anonymous female sitters, are rendered in a range of closely related tones. Although in her lifetime, John's work was overshadowed by that of her brother Augustus and her mentor and lover Auguste Rodin, awareness and esteem for John's artistic contributions have grown considerably since her death.

Gwen John was born in Haverfordwest, Wales, the second of four children of Edwin William John and his wife Augusta, née Smith (1848-1884). Gwen's elder brother was Thornton John; her younger siblings were Augustus and Winifred. 

Following their mother's premature death in 1884, the family moved to Tenby in Wales, where governesses provided the early education of Gwen and her sister Winifred. The siblings often went to the coast of Tenby to sketch. 

From 1895 to 1898, John studied at the Slade School of Art, the only art school in the United Kingdom that allowed female students, although there was generally no mixing of men and women. Like her younger brother, Augustus, who was enrolled there starting in 1894, John studied figure drawing under Henry Tonks. During this period, she and Augustus shared living quarters. She developed a close relationship with the woman who would become her brother's wife, Ida Nettleship. At this time, she also had a relationship with another of her brother's friends, Ambrose McEvoy, which turned out to be an unhappy one. 

Even as a student, Augustus's brilliant draughtsmanship and personal glamour made him a celebrity, and stood in contrast to Gwen's quieter gifts and reticent demeanour. Augustus greatly admired his sister's work but believed she neglected her health, and he urged her to take a "more athletic attitude to life". She refused his advice and demonstrated throughout her life a marked disregard for her physical well-being.

In 1898 she made her first visit to Paris with two friends from the Slade, and while there she studied under James McNeill Whistler at his school, Académie Carmen. She returned to London in 1899 and exhibited her work for the first time in 1900, at the New English Art Club (NEAC). 

In late 1903, she travelled to France with her friend Dorelia McNeill (who would later become Augustus John's second wife and whose daughter, Vivien John, would also become an artist). 

In 1904, the two went to Paris, where John found work as an artist's model, mostly for women artists. That same year, she began modelling for the sculptor Auguste Rodin and became his lover. Her devotion to Rodin, the most famous artist of his time, who was 35 years older than her, continued unabated for the next ten years, as documented in her thousands of fervent letters to him. John was given to fierce attachments to both men and women that were sometimes disturbing to him, and Rodin, despite his genuine feeling for her, eventually resorted to using concièrges and secretaries to keep her at a distance.

In Meudon, John lived in solitude, except for her cats. In an undated letter she wrote, "I should like to go and live somewhere where I meet nobody I know till I am so strong that people and things could not affect me beyond reason". She also wished to avoid family ties.

John exhibited in Paris for the first time in 1919 at the Salon d'Automne and exhibited regularly until the mid-1920s, after which she became increasingly reclusive and painted less. She had only one solo exhibition in her lifetime, at the New Chenil Galleries in London in 1926. 

John's last dated work is a drawing of 20 March 1933, and no evidence suggests that she drew or painted during the remainder of her life. On 10 September 1939, she wrote her will and then travelled to Dieppe, where she collapsed and was hospitalised. She died there on 18 September 1939 and was buried in Janval Cemetery. According to Paul Johnson in Art: A New History, "she appears to have starved to death".